Dear Reporters, Contributors and Editors of “the mainstream media”,
Tuesday night on my way to a friend’s house to watch the election return. I thought about writing a letter address to you. I remember saying to myself that whoever wins this election, it would not fundamentally change the core message of my letter. I don’t even have a right to choose during this whole process. I’m a Chinese who’s currently holding a H1-B Visa and working in the U.S. I’m what some people would call an outsider. But as someone who has the honor to claim herself a communicator, I can’t withhold what I’ve seen and experienced during this election. As a human being, I can’t withhold the words.
Never in my life did I ever imagine that I’d care about politics, let alone American politics. Yet, I was forced to learn more than I’ve ever wanted along the way. As a person with Chinese background who have lived in the states for 8 years, I surround myself with both U.S. social media and Chinese social media. From both sides I learned that, when Americans are showing the highest enthusiasm towards this election, there also comes Chinese, who would not want to be left behind in this trend. I’m not just referring to Chinese Americans, but pointing at the entire Chinese speaking community, including visitors, temporary residents, permanent residents and citizens, and even further, those who have never stepped their foot in this country. I talk to you about this large group because their opinions affect each other, affect this election.
People from the Chinese speaking community may not all be paying attention to the U.S. mainstream media, to your works, but thanks to the modern technology and the rise of social media, they’ve all been sharing and discussing information, articles and opinions about this election, crafted by “their own people”. These writers claim themselves as “self-media”. They use Chinese language social media very efficiently to share information, thoughts and opinions. These self-media are super popular not just in China but also among Chinese speaking communities here in the States. Restaurants and retail businesses who can get these self-media to write about them in their articles often experience a huge increasing in Chinese consumers. You know how it works. Self-media platforms (like “WeChat Public Accounts”, which is the most successful one among all) have become a booming business.
It was a large amount of this same group of new media, producing articles about this election, full of fake information, conspiracy, but no fact base at all. Some of those articles, to show that they are quoting reliable sources, would put up an English news article or one not-completed sentence and translate them into something totally different, or intentionally misinterpret the actual meaning of the quoted source. According to them, all mainstream media are on Hillary Clinton’s side, therefore attacking Trump, portraying him as the devil have always been on their agenda. According to them, most Chinese people here (with or without the right to vote) favor Trump.
When the “reopening of Clinton’s email case” news broke, some of them quoted one headline of a NYT’s opinion piece -- “How Hillary Clinton Met Satan” -- saying it’s a proof of NYT (together with the mainstream media) abandoning Clinton. They use this again then, to prove that “you all are not trustworthy”. That is, of course, one of many examples that I want to share with you.
So many times that I thought about blocking those accounts, but I didn’t. Because that’ll just make me one of them. Because in order to be not too biased, I’ll need to know what they are talking about.
I’m not here to tell you that “people only choose to see what they want to see”, because we’ve seen enough proof of that. I am here to say though, that there are a large amount of Chinese Americans who still rely on Chinese language media (including traditional, but most new media) to receive information. Unfortunately among those Chinese language media, exist lots of fact-free ones, and they won’t stop telling Chinese Americans that “you are all lying”. Those who believed these information simply because they don’t read English, did end up voting for Trump.
That night when walking down the street of Central Park South, I know that deep down in my heart, I was hoping for one result over the other one. I hoped that Hillary could win a very tight election, so tight that it would be a winning by 1 point. Then it’d be scary enough to force us to reflect on ourselves. Then we’d spend less time crying or cursing at the others, but questioning ourselves, asking how did it come this close for us to lose. If that was the case, I believe people would feel at least just a little bit more optimistic. There would be a lot of voices saying “okay, now we’ve past the scariest moment, but let’s not forget the hidden risk, let’s figure out what’s causing this scary situation, and let’s fix it.” Those voices would sound more confident too. Of course, all those “if” now don’t exist.
But as I said in the beginning of my letter, the results don’t really change what I want to let you know. Because Chinese Americans are a large group of people and this group is growing rapidly. Their votes do count, they do matter. I certainly hope that there would be an accurate poll to analyze Chinese voters, followed by a plan to really reach out to them.
pixelskylines
izzy806
vaporwave
jacobvanloon
yousharknotpass
amandla
gummygunk
